sanity log #3 (James Blake lyrics ensue)

My standard of life has reconfigured itself again.

In a stomach-tossing turn of events, happiness and self-love have become the norm.

It's the difference between writing on a frost white board with a black marker and writing on a midnight black board with milky chalk.

It's the reality that's changed.

Oh God, I can't believe the delusion I've been swimming in for the past few years.

Whenever I felt happy, it was temporary. And I knew it was temporary when I experienced it, knowing that depression was the center of my gravity. Perversely, depression became magnetic to me, eventually even cozy, a dark, warm, numb center of reality I could disappear in.

If I crashed down from happiness, it wasn't with the knowledge that I had to climb out of it. I convinced myself that I deserved it, tracing the patterns and mistakes of my past and somehow ruling myself to a life sentence of self-harm.

Not in the conventionally conceived way of self-harm. My scars were dark half moons under my eyes, self-imposed sleep deprivation, food deprivation, exercise deprivation. I stopped myself from excelling in school, from letting go of my inhibitions in social situations, from getting close to people. I didn't believe myself to be worth it. There was no tangible target for losing my friends in the past year, so I attacked myself. Like the Stars song, or like a strange inverse St. Ignatius, when there's nothing left to burn, you set yourself on fire.

Even amid the darkness of my psyche, I was prevented from falling completely from grace, because there were always present pinpricks of light. My family. My friends. Faculty at my college who supported me. Unseen friends from far away who supported me.

And there were always books. I have an entire adopted family that I owe so much of my wisdom and perspective to. Maya Angelou is my grandmother, John Steinbeck my grandfather, Alice Hoffman my mother, and Chuck Palahniuk my father.

Without them, and so many others, I'm not sure if I could have seen anything at all.

And I know for certain that if it wasn't for Chuck Palahniuk, I would have never had the strength to forgive myself enough to seek help. Helping yourself isn't glamorous. It isn't an insane road trip led by queen supreme Brandy Alexander, it isn't Plumbago and pastel colored pills, an elaborate path to self-destruction. It's making the very unglamorous call to Psychological Services and confirming that you're not a fictional character, and that your emotions aren't fictional or frivolous. They're real. You're real. And you deserve to give yourself the chance to heal.

I'm not perfect, and I'm not sure that I'll ever be. I never want to be. We're all damaged. But I am strong. I am resilient. And I finally have control.

Now close your eyes. Breathe. And feel it all.

James Blake, Retrograde

You’re on your own, in a world you’ve grown

Few more years to go,
Don’t let the hurdle fall
So be the girl you loved,
Be the girl you loved

I’ll wait, so show me why you’re strong
Ignore everybody else,
We’re alone now
I’ll wait, so show me why you’re strong
Ignore everybody else,
We’re alone now

Suddenly I’m hit
Is this darkness of the dawn
And your friends are gone
When you friends won’t come
So show me where you fit
So show me where you fit

I’ll wait, so show me why you’re strong
Ignore everybody else,
We’re alone now
We’re alone now
We’re alone now

I’ll wait
We’re alone now
We’re alone now

I’ll wait
We’re alone now
We’re alone now
We’re alone now
We’re alone now

Suddenly I’m hit
Is this darkness of the dawn
And your friends are gone
When you friends won’t come
So show me where you fit
So show me where you fit

sanity log #2 (so much for brevity)

This will be short, and I'll expound upon it later. I can't come up with a neat & grandiose way to tie this one up into a hopeful, sparkly little package like I usually can. I wish I could. But the truth is, I've finally woken up. I've untangled my mind, whose synapses were for so long as intertwined as a thousand necklaces in a jewelry box. I know what growing up feels like. It's fucking shattering & scattering & scarring. But it's necessary, and in the end, it's good. The only wisdom I feel like I have the right to bestow upon any of you is this: no one is clever enough to predict the course of their life. Since I was a child, I held close, like a cozy security blanket, the false notion that I would be unaffected by society and time, that nothing could change me, that I somehow, with the power of will, could make everything perfect. You can never truly know heartbreak until you look it in the eye. You can never know pain until you're panting for breath every time a room falls silent, until all the words you try to read or say bleed into an indiscernible pool, until you can't think of one reason to leave your bed in the morning, so you don't, until every time somebody looks you in the eye you count their motives and plan an escape, until your body and your thoughts become separate entities, until you can't stop crying and you don't know why you started, until you can't start crying even though every atom is begging you to, until you're crying for the first time in months in the office of an intern psychologist, only realizing the depth of your pain as the words involuntarily escape your lips, and they stream out, and they won't stop, and you can't turn back. I tried to evade my issues for so long that they melded with my skin, not disappearing, but affecting everything I did. Everything took on the color of my depression. But I've finally found the strength to confront it. And while my peers, my friends, my professors, my teachers, my parents all look at my grades, look at my actions and think "she doesn't give a fuck," "she's not trying," I look at every individual moment and trace how I got here, to this point. And I'm proud of every single one. The only lens that's true and that matters is mine, I know that for sure now. I'm done letting other people define me. I'm done looking at myself through others' eyes. I know who I am and I'm unstoppable. Not because I'm perfect. Not because I have the delusion that I can be. But because I have no other setting. I wish I could have made it here faster, I wish I could have the luxury of sweet retrospection. But every shard is a part of me, and makes me stronger. Makes me, me. I exist. I am. I count. And I deserve to not only exist, but live.

sanity log #1

 "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"-Kurt Vonnegut                 

I can feel a physical shift after crying, a sweet calm-after-the-storm, dust-settling clarity that I never know exists until I reach it. What's tricky is that I don't know I'm holding my breath until I let it go. When I'm depressed, I don't see it as depression, but a false clarity. I see it as reality finally hitting me, and so I wear it like an ugly cardigan and pretend it's a blood orange Michael Kors blazer, shifting my tastes to fit this "objectivity." Because really, all I want to do is exist on the same plane as everyone else. I too often feel like my thoughts and emotions are at a completely different altitude than those of my peers, so it's difficult to converse with them. I constantly feel like there's a hurricane brewing under my skin, and it rushes and rushes until I can't even hear myself think anymore, least of all hear anything else. But when I cry, it's gone. But it's always a matter of time until it collects again, starts spiraling and spiraling, just gradually enough for me not to feel it coming. Like a lobster in the cooking pot.

I cried today, but it was a different kind of cry. It didn't feel torn from my lungs like the first one, it wasn't violent or sharp. It wasn't a downpour. It was almost a happy cry, relief. The tears rolled down my cheeks, involuntary, but cathartic. I can feel myself finally beginning to heal.

And I feel in control, at least for today. I chose to write this, not out of knee-jerk escapism, but out of inspiration, knowing that I need to listen to Vonnegut and keep note of when I feel this way. Here's sanity log 1.

tyler, the master

"Fuck buying studio time, I'ma go purchase a shrink/Record the session and send all you motherfuckers a link"-Tyler the Creator, Rusty

                                                                       dude gets me.

en rose

"She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris."-Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary 

That is one of the most beautiful strings of words that I've heard in a long time. It's a string of words that makes me feel. Where I am is a dull, pale ocean, but where I'm going is a marvel. Paris, my honey-colored lover. I'll meet you soon when my lungs are ready.

And I was coincidentally drawn to the novel Madame Bovary when I was at the Strand last weekend. I had to have you, but I didn't know why. But now I think you're just what the celestial doctor prescribed.

I have a difficult time believing that I'm real. I see myself so objectively that I think every word that falls out of my lips is a lie. If personality is is an unbroken string of successful gestures, then no wonder my vision of myself is shattered. I can't utter a word without tearing it apart in retrospect.

I close my eyes, and all I see are the sunglasses.

The sunglasses I'll wear in Paris one day strutting down cobbled streets.

The sunglasses I'll wear in New York walking to the publishing office.

I see lots of striped dresses and peacoats in candy colors.

I also see the other sunglasses.

The sunglasses I wore in high school to shield my tired eyes.

The sunglasses I wear Wednesdays after crying.

But I never wear sunglasses to hide. I'm always making a statement.

My gait transforms when there's plastic resting on my ears.

My breathing eases. All of the muscles in my body melt.

I'm hot and I'm heady and I'm ready to take you on.

C'est la vie en rose.

                                               Shameless selfy

                              "Let us play with your look"= life motto

confessions

So I'm just really mad, okay.

I have an anger burning a blinding white exploding in my core,

atoms splitting in my spine,

fire ravaging my veins.

I'm honestly done with this.

I'm done with segmenting myself for everybody to match their expectations of me.

I'm done with letting my fears manifest themselves into my reality.

I'm done with hiding my intelligence as a cry for help,

as a way to make my limb-splitting pain

tangible to everyone who

refuses to recognize it,

myself included.

I'm done with squandering all my potential

in rebellion of the atomic war inside of me,

a war against myself and everything I stand for.

Just because the problem is myself doesn't mean I should punish myself.

There's nothing else to burn, so I set myself on fire.

I feel powerless otherwise.

It's the only control I feel like I have.

When "Just" makes sense to you, you should probably go to therapy.

So I did.

It helps me understand myself, but it doesn't do anything to help anyone else understand.

My academic advisor asked me how everything is going, but the answer to that question

can either be answered in three words or a thousand.

So of course I chose the former.

And I can't help but compare my problems to others' problems,

and in the grand scheme of things

my issues seem frivolous,

and the fact that they're burning the edges of my life

makes me feel frivolous as a human being.

How dare I be destroyed by this when there is so much greater pain in the world.

But everything is relative, and this pain has too many layers to unravel so simply.

It's my fucking disposition, I can't target it.

I broke my foot playing dodgeball recently,

and in a way it's the best thing that could have happened to me.

It's given me a lot of time to think.

And I can't help but think that I wish people reacted to my mental health

in the same way they reacted to my physical health--

sympathetic, but confident that I'll be okay,

and proud of my strength in powering through the difficulty.

I wish I could address it with a funny anecdote,

and I wish we could all laugh at it so I can begin to move on.

I wish I could bedazzle my psyche

and have my closest friends sign it with

sarcastic pseudonyms so that

every time I feel it

I can wish it away with

sassy adrenaline.

But instead I get an academic advisor to tell me that "it's okay that you're not an A student,"

while I want to scream that I am,

I am I am I am I am I Am,

I know I

A

m,

I'm just trying, trying, trying to find a way

to show you without completely

falling apart.

And one day, when I finally get there,

you'll rue the day that you defined me,

and understand that a 4.0 will mean

much more to me than a

GPA.

Me and my BFF Johnny

4AM college rants

OKAY SO IT'S 4AM IN COLLEGE AND I HAVE AN ESSAY DUE AND I PUT OFF MY HOMEWORK TO WATCH THE GRAMMYS WHICH WAS SUBPAR BUT THEY'RE STILL KINDA LIKE MY SUPERBOWL AND I JUST GOT MY PERIOD SO I'M GOING TO BE SUPER CANDID.

                              Enter ghostly complexion and dark circles.

1) I REALLY WANT SOME MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM, SODEXO MAKE IT HAPPEN.

2) I KINDA REALLY REALLY WANT A NOSE RING BUT IT'S MORE PERMANENT THAN OTHER PIERCINGS BECAUSE IT IS ON YOUR ACTUAL FACE AND COULD LEAVE A PERMANENT MARK ON YOUR ACTUAL FACE.

3) I RAN OUT OF BAND AIDS SO I'M MAKING MAKESHIFT BAND AIDS OUT OF PAPER TOWELS AND MASKING TAPE AND ALL I CAN THINK OF IS HEROIN BOB'S MAKESHIFT BAND AID FROM SLC PUNK AND HOW IT GOT CRAZY INFECTED AND HOW THIS CANNOT BE ME.

4) I SWEAR THAT I WILL NEVER BE UP THIS LATE AGAIN. IN LITERATURE THAT TIME BETWEEN 2 AND 5 AM IS CALLED THE WITCHING HOUR BUT I HEREBY DEEM IT THE BITCHING HOUR BECAUSE THERE'S ALWAYS THIS ONE GIRL IN THE LOUNGE BITCHING TO/ABOUT SOME GUY AND SOMETIMES THAT GIRL IS ME.

5) MY STOMACH IS MAKING SAD MOUSE NOISES AND THE BITCHING HOUR GIRL CAN DEFINITELY HEAR IT AND IS SILENTLY BITCHING ABOUT THAT IN HER HEAD WHILE SHE'S BITCHING ABOUT THE GUY.

6) TAYLOR SWIFT MAKES HER MONEY OFF OF BREAKUPS AND I CAN'T TELL IF I HATE HER BECAUSE IT'S MORALLY SICKENING OR BECAUSE I'M SLIGHTLY JEALOUS OF....NOPE IT'S DEFINITELY THE FORMER STOP THE PRESSES.

7) I ACTUALLY REALLY LIKE IT HERE.

I've been making some slightly irresponsible decisions lately, and I still feel lost, but I actually feel like I'm exactly where I should be. And that means more than anything at this point in my life.